What's your most stupid DIY cockup?

[harry]

ot by this site

Lay concrete, then absentmindedly walk across it a few minutes later.

Try to construct a thermal heat store.

[RJH]

Seeing an increasing number of dissertation students use forums as a source of primary data.

Rob

[sm_jamieson]

I didn't make that mistake. I remembered to put the plug in - thinking "ooh, close one" ! Then when I'd finished cleaning the waste pipe I pulled out the plug !

Simon.

[fred]

Suitably mitigated by your public service sig.

[Andrew Gabriel]

A friend did something similar with a rental car. At end of a holiday, they were driving one of the people to a railway station in Spain IIRC, who was going home to Germany by train, before dropping the car back at the airport and catching a plane home.

When they dropped off the friend at the station, unload his lugguage, and waved him off, they realised the rental car keys were on the train, heading off to Germany, and the car was stopped in a no stopping place outside the station...

[Tim Lamb]

In message , Mentalguy2k8 writes

I must have a very selective memory unless you count the occasion when I foolishly stepped off a 15' ladder onto an asbestos roof that had been exposed to fire....

[Dave Liquorice]

Don't think I've actually done that and made a mess but I've certainly got very close. Like replacing bucket used to catch the trap water under the sink, rinsing the trap, going to empty bucket...

Cutting through the rising main before the inside stopcock was interesting. In mitigation the "builders" who refurbished this place had run it through that copper coloured plastic waste pipe through the floor slab but at a shallow angle. This "waste" pipe didn't appear to go anywhere it wasn't connected to the sink, and didn't appear the other side of the units. It was in the way... Hacksaw out, cutting through nicely, phsssstttt, and water appears in the cut. Fortunately I'd found the outside stop c*ck and obtained a key a week or two before (it's twenty yards down the road in the verge normally buried under grass). It was only a small cut and inside the "waste" pipe so water wasn't spraying everywhere for the few minutes it took to get the water turned off.

[polygonum]

Using a chain lubricant that required heating for my motorcycle chain.

Put it on the cooker at a low setting, went outside to undo another nut which was stuck fast. Eventually heard an odd popping/bubbling noise. Kitchen black. Air black. Me black.

Called fire brigade but, luckily, it was all disgusting mess rather than burning building.

Used spray lubricant thereafter...

[Graham.]

The first car I had with an integral steering lock

[Graham.]

As I was saying

The first car I had with an integral steering lock had a button on the underside of the column that you had to press before you could rotate the key fully anticlockwise which engaged the lock. So removing the key was a two-handed affair.

[F Murtz]

In the days before asbestos was dangerous, cutting a hole in the asbestos sheeted wall with a circular saw with abrasive blade in it and cutting through all circuits to the rear of the house, the last one being the one the saw was on.

[docholliday93]

More of a near miss, but... Many years ago I was helping a charity out - they were using a former hospi tal building owned by the Department of Transport (waiting to be demolished for a bypass). One day I went in and noticed the drains seemed to be overf lowing, even though we weren't using much water. A bit of detective work sh owed that the drain ran along the back of the building, then out to a littl e housing estate (presumably they'd sold of some of the grounds for develop ment, and the developer just tapped into the existing drain). All the house s were on higher ground, so none had noticed the problem. Continuing to follow the drain, I finally found a manhole that wasn't full, just before the sewer in the road, and a bit of inspection showed some roo ts blocking the inlet. Unfortunately the manhole was pretty deep, so althou gh I had a hook around 6 feet long to try to move the roots, I still had to lean a fair way into the hole. As I removed the blockage a tidal wave of backed up sewage started pouring into the manhole - it rose to within an inch of the top... Fortunately I was younger and fitter then (and I had expected a fair bit to come through, I'd just underestimated), so I got out just in time, with on ly a bruise where I'd hit something in my hurry to get out.

[John Rumm]

Reminds me of a similar episode at my mum's place... she was complaining of a blocked drain, so I went round with rods etc to help clear. We finally established that most of the run down the side of the house was clear, and so it must be the final few yards to the manhole. Alas there was what they termed a "weaver" in this drain - a vented vertical drop tube that intercepts the end of the drain and drops it about another 3 or 4 feet before it enters the manhole. This means you can't rod right through from the top, and rodding down the weaver was not shifting it either. So mother decides we need to go down the manhole and rod back up the last bit of pipe. I was going to do the gallant thing, but she insisted on going down since she was wearing old clothes already (and in those days, enthusiasm often got the better of her)...

So there she is at the bottom of this probably 10 - 12' deep hole banging away with a couple of rods against some blockage (I don't think she had thought this one through to the logical conclusion!) Then after a moment there was a loud gurgle, and a sound of rushing water. Realisation rapidly downed that she was about to be in the shit (literally). There are foot holds set into the wall, but they were not quick to scale in a panic. There was a scream, and I saw this hand reach into the air for assistance. So I reached down, grabbed it and pulled hard. Fortunately the combination of 5' something diddy mother, and somewhat larger me, meant she came out of the hole like a cork out of a bottle - with nothing more than slightly damp shoes!

[John Rumm]

I think the most powerfully dumb one must be sticking your hand into the back of a planer thicknesser to sweep out some shavings, but forgetting you have not turned it off!

[Man at B&Q]

Using a pipe cutter to cut the service valve (closed) off the end of the cold feed to the wachine machine without checking that, however tortuous the route would need to be, it might, just might, be connected to the rising main.

MBQ

[Huge]

BTDT. Except it was a 6'3" man (*) apparently levitating vertically out of an inspection chamber.

(* Me.)

[harry]

Linklyfe? I remember it well.

[Lobster]

Do bikers still do that, or is it one of these things that's confined to history?

I used to do it regularly in my own motorcycling days about 30 years ago, in my Mum's kitchen; she nearly had a fit every time, convinced it was going to end badly one way ot another. Happy to report that it

*never* did!

[polygonum]

No idea...

[tim......]

so the "safety" cap wasn't a give-away then?

tim